The Long Cut
by Anna S
Summary: It was the running joke of his life that he never knew where he was going until he was almost there.


_I. _

In the beginning, when whispering into the night, and having sex for a second time still meant more than getting enough sleep to get through the grueling days on rotation, Christina told him about her father. Her fingers drummed circles against his stomach while she described her father's cycle of girlfriends, his absence at every meaningful event, his easy charm.

"I did all the right things, I went to therapy. And I know logically, that my dad is just another clichéd jerk, that what he did has nothing to do with me. But it never feels like that."

She looked at him with bright, trusting eyes and in that moment Danny hated her father even more than he hated his own, fiercely, familiarly.

"And it's stupid because I was a happy kid, I had a good life, but I look back on it now, and it's like there's this crack running through all those memories, from the very beginning. Like I wasn't really happy, even though I know I was."

"But you're happy now," he said. He was annoyed by how his voice rose at the end, turning it into a question mark.

She reached up to kiss him, threading one hand through his and digging her other hand into his side. Right then, he loved that they had this in common. It was something else that united them, that made them a team.

"Now tell me one of your secrets, Castellano," she said. Her lips grazed the side of his neck like a whisper.

He opened his mouth and then closed it. He wanted to say, in the moments that he hates himself the most, it's because he understands sometimes why his dad left. Nobody loves harder than his mom. Nobody guilt trips better.

And in those moments, he knows that he has inherited the worst of both of them. His ma's Italian temper and his dad's moody sullenness. His ma's exacting standards and his dad's selfishness.

But he didn't want Christina to see him that way.

"I love you," he said instead.

He could feel her smile against him, and then she nipped him, lightly on the shoulder.

"I said, a secret, Danny. You're such an open book." But she gave him a full smile, all teeth. He rolled her closer, pulling her fully against his chest, running his hands over her strong arms and wondered if he could make it through another shift with no sleep at all.

Later he will realize that she never answered his question. Much, much later, he will think about her voice when she told him about the crack running through her life, all the way forward and all the way back. And he will wonder if maybe things would have been different it if just one of them knew what a marriage looked like when it was done right.

* * *

That first time around, she never took photos of him. They would walk down the street, and she would drop his hand to take photos of everything around them: the scrappy dog pissing on the street; the homeless man snoring in a lawn chair, his dick hanging out from his unzipped pants; a drunk couple giggling at each other in a restaurant window. All of these things were worthy of documenting, but not him.

"What, I'm not interesting enough?" he would ask.

And she would inevitably roll her eyes and say, "Danny, I don't need to take photos of you – I have you."

He could never explain to her, without feeling like an idiot why it bothered him so much, and at a certain point he became convinced that she was doing it because she enjoyed infuriating him. But he would still occasionally sort through her negatives, waiting to see his face. He saw their life together: their apartment, their friends, even the view from the ferry when it pulled into Staten Island, rusted container terminals shrouded in fog. As if he was the only thing that did not belong.

The second time around, he found out what it felt like to be the target of her lens. She photographed him over and over, up close, far away, until he felt like he was always posing around him.

For every piece of clothing he took off, she would take off something, until she was naked except for her socks and her over-sized camera. She would hand him a prop or move his arm, so that it was curved gracefully away from his torso, but when he tried to kiss her, or grab her slender hips, she shushed him. He felt like a fool, but he loved having her full attention, knowing that she would spend the next day in the darkroom in their basement, examining the smallest details of his face.

He occasionally wondered what had changed between then and now, but he tried not to think too hard about any of it.

* * *

The commute to the city wasn't too bad. Some days he even liked it. Every morning he got a seat, and nobody made eye contact with him or blared hip-hop music. The trip was long enough to read a journal article or work on growing the list of all the things he liked about New Jersey.

The list had started off short: Christina, pretty decent bagels, the short drive to Staten. But he was determined to learn to love it, through sheer force of will and strength of mind. The Castellano way.

And the list did eventually grow. He found an Italian place with a perfect bolognese sauce, and in the spring, he was planning on building a shed in their backyard with his own strength and sweat. He liked that gas was cheap, although he hated watching somebody else fill his car's tank. _It's their job, Danny_, Christina would say and he could never make her see how absurd it was. It was just like the workers sitting in the tollbooths all day, while every car zipped through the EZPass lane. The worst kind of inefficiency.

But today, he was coming up blank. He reread Mindy's latest letter instead, trying not to laugh at her absurd, bubbly high school girl handwriting. When she wasn't begging him for updates on her reality TV shows, he liked how his life looked, reflected back in Mindy's letters. She always expected him to be the stand up guy, to be the man who picked up the phone and came through when it mattered the most, and it made him believe that maybe he was.

As they pulled into Newark, he took one last deep breath of fresh air before the industrial stench hit. He played Glory Days, and thought, Springsteen loved it here, so could he.

In the end, he didn't buy her a ring. He didn't even make it to the diamond district. He had already put a ring on her finger and made her every promise he knew how to make, and he had even kept most of them. He was too old for big romantic gestures. Besides, she had spent the last two months looking at him under a lens; there was nothing new he could say about himself. He just had to hope that if he went home, and told her he loved her and meant it, that would be enough.

The trip to Jersey took a long time that afternoon, but he didn't work on his list.

When he got to the house, she was sitting on their couch, gripping a glass of wine. He could see the evidence of a temper tantrum strewn around the living room, but she seemed calm.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," she replied, not looking at him. The light shined through the windows, crisscrossing her face.

He exhaled and sat down next to her. "I don't not want to have sex with you, Christina." He tried to smile at her but didn't quite manage it. His tongue felt unwieldy, like it was larger than usual.

"You know I, you know." He gestured at her lamely.

"Of course you do," she said. "I know you love my body, Danny."

"So why are you so mad?" he said, trying not to shout, but unable to stop himself from throwing his arms up in the air.

"Tell me why you don't you want to sleep with me Danny, " her voice was starting to rise. "And for once, be honest with yourself, so maybe you have a chance of being honest with me. Tell me something _true._"

He stroked her cheek, but she turned away, clenching her fingers tighter around the stem of the wine glass. He tried to think of something to say that wouldn't be a disaster, that wouldn't push this fight over the cliff into an end.

For a long time, he had missed her so bitterly that everything else in his life had been filtered through that feeling. But he had filled the spaces she left behind with rituals and rhythms, with work and the practice, and there was no room left for her.

The truth was that fixing things with Christina had gotten all tangled up with fixing his life, but those weren't the same things anymore.

"I guess, I've just been, not happy, and I didn't know how to tell you that," he admitted.

For the first time, she looked into his face, her eyes cold with anger.

"You never really thought this was going to work did you."

"No, Christina," he said, but she backed away from him, her hands twitching. "I tried, I really wanted this to work. I love you," he said, but it was an apology, not a promise.

"Was this just some twisted way of getting back at me for how things ended last time? Was this a fun game for you, Dan?"

"Christina," he tried again, but she cut him off.

"You know what my mom said when I first met you? She said, be careful with that boy, he'll tear you apart before he'll let himself be happy. You're selfish, Danny. I thought you changed, but you're the same selfish person you always were."

"That's not fair. I did my best."

"Well I guess that's not enough then, is it." With deliberate theatricality, she stood up, poured herself another full glass of wine, and strode out of the room, towards her darkroom. Christina always did have a knack for the dramatic.

And for the second time in his life, Danny wandered through their home, by himself, taking only the things he absolutely needed. This time, he did not stop in her closet, to breathe in her familiar smell.

He took the train home, thinking about the clean lines of his quiet apartment. Even then, in that moment, he still missed Christina, but he missed who she had been to him, not who she was to him now. He would never be un-divorced. There was no going back.

_II._

After they finished burning his sheets and his pillowcases and a black bra he found under the bed, which in retrospect he was fairly certain belonged to somebody else, he and Mindy sat on the couch with a drink. He ordered Chinese food, while she nudged him and said "Danny, Danny, remember to ask for extra wontons."

She made him take a shot of tequila before they ate - _a toast to your re-divorce!_ – and he'd had two glasses of wine earlier, so he wasn't drunk, but he was getting there fast. The pungent smell of the food masked the lingering scent of Paul's weird candles. For once, she had even let him control the television remote. He rarely felt relaxed around Mindy, since you never knew when the other shoe could drop, but tonight he was pleasantly loose.

Mindy slurped at her noodles, a few strands slipping free, leaving a long streak of grease across her chin. He tried not to grimace.

"You're like an animal. Did your parents never teach you to eat with utensils?"

"That's racist, Danny."

"How is that racist? Mindy there's actually dumpling in your hair." He picked out a bit of pork from a curl of hair by her ear and showed it to her. She continued eating, seemingly unconcerned. Her lips were stained a deep merlot red.

"You know what's weird?" he asked.

"That you got back together with your cheating ex-wife? Or that we're watching a TV show about some guy sleeping in the desert in the middle of the summer and drinking his own pee?"

He ignored her. "I was just thinking about all the people who came to my wedding and celebrated that day with us. I had high school friends and college friends and medical school friends, and somehow here I am, with you. Where did they all go?" He had meant to sound indignant, but by the end, his voice had gotten soft. .

"People get married, have kids, move into the suburbs," she said, and he knew she was trying to keep her tone light, but he could hear the current of bitterness in her voice.

"You'll get those things," he said. "I know you will."

She beamed at him. "Danny, when you're not being a jerk, you can be so sweet. Although I'm engaged to Casey, so I'm obviously getting those things. And you'll get them too, I know it."

"Maybe. But this whole thing showed me that if I don't, that's ok. I like what I have now. There are worse things than being alone."

"Okay," she said, skeptically. "Name one. And prison doesn't count."

"Being with somebody who makes you feel alone." He was drunker than he realized, to be admitting these things to somebody who would inevitably throw them back in his face on another day.

"That's just another way of saying the exact same thing."

"It's completely different!"

She raised her hands, up in a gesture of defeat and said, "okay, okay. You're sad so I'm not going to puncture your pathetic delusions." She poked him in the side with her finger. "If you tell anybody I said this, I will deny it until I die, but I'm glad you're back."

He smiled at her. "Me too, Min."

* * *

Mindy commandeered his bedroom to get dressed, informing him that his bathroom did not have nearly enough outlets, and _how did he ever expect to have a woman over?,_ while he cleaned up their plates in the kitchen. He could not quite escape the nagging feeling of loss, even though he reminded himself that losing something you probably didn't even want wasn't really a loss at all.

On their way to work, she prattled on about Cliff, visibly excited to have a new listener, so he barely managed to get a word in. Not that he had much to contribute about Cliff's hair or his taste in suits.

He had stood next to her on the subway a million times before, but he couldn't seem to remember how he had done it in the past. Everywhere he put his arm felt wrong. And each time the car swayed or the crowd jostled him closer to her, he jerked away as if she was a live wire.

"You are being even weirder than usual today," she said, as he apologized to a passenger for kicking over her purse. Her green, pointed nails were suddenly in his face as she pressed the back of her hand against his forehead. Her fingers were surprisingly long and graceful. Pianist's hands, he thought, as his neck prickled with sweat.

"You're warm, Danny. Your forehead feels like a furnace."

"No, I'm not, I'm completely normal. This is just my usual average, every day normal temperature." His voice was strangled.

"Well then you run very hot," she said.

"What?" he stammered.

"Your temperature, dummy. Don't get so excited."

The doors slid open and he was relieved to see it was their stop. He let Mindy go ahead of him, before he took a deep breath, wiped a thin sheen of sweat from his brow, and told himself to pull it together. He made a concerted effort not to stare at her as she moved through the crowds, the bright, clashing yellows of her outfit making her stick out like a sore thumb in the sea of blue and black suits.

_Shit_, he thought.

* * *

There were more reasons than he could count that this was truly a terrible idea; the kind of idea that was so bad he still couldn't believe it wasn't Mindy's.

And he knew, because he had been counting them. He couldn't seem to stop himself from mentally cataloguing everything he disliked about her, and that was another reason all by itself. Not only had she forced him into a state of near constant, mild panic, she was actually infecting him with her sorority girl coping methods. Next thing he knew, he would be making pro/con lists and swooning to the floor, crying over every dopey guy he met.

_Because Jeremy would never let him live it down. Because she was, literally, the most irritating person in the world. He had never seen her eat a single vegetable on purpose. His teeth would probably rot, by proxy, from all that artificial sugar she ate. _

The list grew and grew. He tried to avoid spending as much time with her, but that just brought more of her focus down on him, and sent something spinning in his gut.

Nothing really changed between them. She continued to hit on every guy who crossed her path with a pulse and all his limbs. Every guy but him.

There had been a time when that was a point of honor for him – that she knew better than to try her bullshit on him or to lump him in with the Deslauriers and Jeremys of the world, but now he wasn't so sure.

And he was still her first choice of confidante to complain about the lame sleezeball she had gone on a date with the night before. He waited for the inevitable – _and okay, yes I slept with him, but that does not mean! _– but instead she described how she snuck out the back of the movie theater and deleted his number from her phone.

He felt, yes, a little relieved, but mostly proud, like a coach whose worst player was finally learning to throw the ball in a straight line. Except maybe he was the coach and the straight line, and there she was, making him mix up his metaphors again.

_III. _

Nothing that happened after their break-up convinced him that his reasons for calling things off were wrong. For weeks, the tension between them leaked into the office, infecting their co-workers until even sunny Betsy was developing worry lines.

But he knew she had an infinite capacity for second chances and limited patience for grudges; she would come around.

When he kissed her, it was the stupidest and the bravest and the most romantic thing he'd ever done. But none of those traits were part of his nature. He should never have let her thought that they were.

* * *

When he left California, his dad had asked him if he could call sometime, just to catch up, and he said yes, figuring he would never hear from him again. But one day that long, strange spring, he picked up his phone and saw he had a voicemail from a California number.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Danny called him back. At first, they made small talk that was almost comfortabl. His dad asked about the practice and Richie. He asked about Dani's soccer team.

"I was thinking, maybe, it might be good if I took Dani to New York over her summer break. You wouldn't have to host us or anything," his dad added quickly, "but I would really love for her to see it. And it would be nice, for both of us, to see you again."

"Maybe," Danny mumbled, "I mean, summer is a busy time here, all those Christmas babies. I'd have to check my calendar."

"Of course! It was just an idea," he replied, almost covering his disappointment. There was a long pause.

"Why did you change dad? What happened?" Until he heard himself asking it, Danny hadn't realized he was going to ask, hadn't even realized how much he needed to know.

There was another pause, and Danny thought about hanging up. He was gripping the phone so hard that his fingertips ached.

His dad starting talking, his voice strained at first. "You probably don't know this, but my dad died, a few years after I moved out here. I skipped the funeral and I toasted that bastard with a six-pack. And then I realized that if I died, you would've done the exact same thing, and I knew, I knew that I had to pull myself together, to show you and Richie that I was capable of being a good father. I couldn't make up excuses anymore or wait for something else to change. I had to do the work. No more shortcuts."

"So, I stopped drinking as much, I tried a few different things, and it turned out I wasn't too bad at cutting hair. I liked it. And then I met my wife, and we had Dani.""

"But you never came back," Danny said, and it wasn't a question. "You just gave your kid the same name, and figured, hey, good enough." A lifetime of bitterness leaked into his voice.

"I – I was a coward, Danny. I'm sorry. I just, I knew as long as I stayed away, I knew there was a possibility that we could make things better – but I was afraid you'd say no. "

"I guess you were right," he said and he hung up, the phone still clenched painfully in his fist. He thought, well that's that, torn between disappointment and relief.

But two weeks later he had another voicemail from California. This time Danny carried the voicemail around for days, letting it gnaw at him. He wished that he was brave enough to ask Mindy what he should do, but she was still not meeting his eyes. He settled for Jeremy telling him that all fathers were worthless.

He briefly let himself succumb to his old anger, reciting the charges to himself, like a nursery tale: he was the reason his ma worked herself half to death. The reason Danny knew how to change diapers with one hand. The reason he took on the kids at school who bullied his sweet, gay brother born with a target on his back, even when those kids were twice his size, with fists the size of platters.

It was comforting, like wrapping himself in a familiar blanket.

Twice he deleted the voicemail, and twice in a panic, had to make up a convoluted story and stand there, sweating heavily, while Betsy retrieved it.

Then he called his dad, because yes, he was a coward, but he would not let himself be more of a coward than Alan Castellano.

Neither of them breached the topic of their earlier talk. After the pleasantries, there was a long silence. His cellphone was slick with sweat and the screen kept sticking to his face.

"About the other day," his dad said, his voice faltering.

"I'm still really mad. I don't know if I'll ever not be mad. Maybe this is a waste of our time."

"It's okay, Danny you can be mad. I don't blame you. But that doesn't mean we can't try. I still want to know what's going on in your life. I don't want to make the same mistakes I made before."

Danny gnawed at the inside of his cheeks while his dad kept filling the silences. "Richie told me he saw you last month, that you were sick?"

"Just a bug," Danny said. "But it was good to see Richie," he added against his will, still the proud almost-father.

"He's a great kid. I'm enjoying getting to know him. You and your mom – you guys did good with him. He was lucky."

"Yeah," Danny said thickly. "Look Dad, you mentioned bringing Dani here? I uh, I had my secretary check my schedule, and I'm not too busy in August. She should see Manhattan, know what a real city looks like. She's a Castellano too."

"That would be great, Danny," his father said, his voice breaking.

* * *

He couldn't quite figure out how he had gotten back to this point: standing outside her door – his door, really – with his heart in his hands; ready to be stupid again.

He couldn't shake the feeling that he had been on a moving walkway for a very long time, without ever noticing it, and now he was nowhere near where he started. It seemed to be the running joke of his life that he never knew where he was going until he was almost there.

But this time, he would make a choice. He knew where he was going next.

_IV._

Her face was shining under the faint glow by the light of her iphone, and he could hear the familiar click-click of her typing.

"Stop talking to Gwen," he said, pulling her against him, so her entire body was pressed against his. She was unbelievably, irresistibly soft. He splayed his hand across her stomach, fascinated by the sharp contrast between their skin.

"Danny, what's the point of an incredibly over-the-top romantic gesture if I can't brag about it to my friends?" she asked, arching her back into him.

"Fine. Get a lot of mileage out of this Min, because it was a one-time deal."

"Oh please, I know what story this is now. I'm the relatable but beautiful heroine who has to date a string of losers before she realizes that her best friend has been pining away for years. It's the oldest story in the book."

"I was not pining!"

She continued in her favorite story-telling voice, "and you're good looking, but not so handsome that anybody remembers to look at you twice. It's not until the end that the heroine notices the secret hottie that's been there all along. And all of a sudden, in that moment, she sees Danny Castellano in a new light."

"I'm pretty sure you looked at me a couple of times," he said, running his hands along the length of her body as she shivered.

"Aren't you still supposed to be apologizing?"

"Hmm, good point," he said, and he kissed her neck, then her collarbone, trailing his mouth all the way down.

* * *

He came home after two long deliveries, ready for a beer and a warm bed. The door wouldn't budge. He knocked loudly, shouting Mindy's name. She opened the door a crack, so he could see her eyes peering out from behind the chain.

"Danny, I don't think you should come in here right now."

He couldn't decide whether to be amused or annoyed, but came down on the side of annoyed. "C'mon, Min, I've had the worst day."

She hesitated for another second then flipped the latch.

"Okay, Danny, I don't want you to freak out. I promise you I will clean up all of this."

"What do you mean?" he asked, his irritation rising. He walked into the kitchen, ready for anything, and even then, was shocked by the scene. Every cupboard door was swung completely open, and there was rice, almost ankle deep, surrounding the kitchen island.

"What?" he sputtered.

"Please don't go into the bedroom yet," she said. She was doing a strange dance, alternating between patting his shoulder and hopping away from him nervously.

He headed straight for the bedroom. It looked like the scene of a gruesome murder, but it smelled like a bar. There was a deep blood-red wine stain the stretching from the foot of the door all the way to the bed, more of a lake than a stain. He groaned, as he remembered the exact cost of his grey, custom carpet.

"What – how did this even happen? Mindy, how many times have I told you not to drink in here!"

"I wasn't –" he gave her his most skeptical glare, stolen from his ma on her worst days, and she threw her arms up.

"I swear! I was simply walking into the living room with a bottle of wine, and yes, I may have been texting Morgan, but it was your stupid shoe I tripped over, so really this is all your fault. And the bottle just sort of flew out of my hands into the room."

"But where did all the rice come from?"

"Well, I know that's how you dry out your phone, so I figured it would work well for carpets. But your bags of rice weigh like two pounds! Who buys that much rice, Danny? Your pantry looks like you're preparing for a nuclear war."

"What! Are you kidding me. Have you ever heard of soap?"

"Danny, you know I don't clean."

"No, you just flood my apartment with alcohol, and don't treat my things with respect, and fill my trash bags with pennies – who throws out pennies? You are literally throwing money away!"

"You know I don't like how they make my fingers smell." She stepped towards him, and curled his fingers around his wrist. "Danny, Danny it was an accident, please don't make this into some weird freak out about something else."

He stepped back from her, shaking his head. He knew there was panic in her eyes, but he couldn't step through the fog of his own anger. "How are we supposed to be in a real relationship when you still act like a kid?"

"Okay, because you know so much about functional relationships."

"Right – when was your last mature relationship? Josh? Casey?"

"Cliff. Charlie," she countered, her eyes narrowing.

"There is fruit on this table that is older than those relationships."

"Jokes on you, I'm pretty sure I bought those apples months ago."

His pager buzzed, and he knew without looking that it would be for Emily Claire, nine months and one week pregnant.

"I gotta go, we can talk about this later." He didn't kiss her cheek. He could still feel the rage coursing through him.

"Saved by the bell," she said, but she wasn't smiling.

* * *

When Danny got to the hospital, Morgan was already there – he sometimes worried that Morgan never actually left – half in, half out of his scrubs. Morgan squinted at him, looking him over.

"What Morgan?" he asked.

"Sorry, Doctor C., your fight hair and your sex hair are pretty similar, so it took me a second, but based on your cowlick, this is definitely fight hair. Now, why don't you tell your friend Morgan what happened."

Danny sighed, knocking his head slightly against his locker. He resisted running his fingers through his hair again.

"It's been a really long day."

Morgan smiled at him, commiserating. "I hear you. Women, right? I'm sure you crazy kids will work it out." His demeanor suddenly changed. "But you better not hurt her. If you hurt her, I'll kill you. Well, I won't kill you, but I know a guy."

Danny put his hand up. "Enough."

He knew when he started dating Mindy that he was opening a window into his private life for the whole office, but he wasn't sure he would ever get used to it. More and more often, he thought nostalgically about the days when his office door stayed closed and he was almost never asked questions about his penis.

Even through his tired haze, the delivery went smoothly, and when he handed over the couple's son, ten toes, ten fingers, perfect wrinkled bald head, he felt what he always felt: that this was the only thing he knew how to get right.

When he got back to his locker, there were nothing from Mindy, but there was an email from his dad with their itinerary for his visit. He skimmed it while Morgan rambled on about what was either a first date or a new stray dog_ – the key is approaching them slowly, and bringing sweets_ – and Danny wondered why the easiest things were so hard for him. Just the simplest _I'm sorry,_ _come on over, I'm making steak, you bring the wine. _

He wanted nothing more than to go home, ignore whatever new wreckage Mindy had created and go to sleep, but he knew where he needed to be. _No shortcuts. Do the work._ She was not who he would've chosen to share his life with. But look what happened when he chose the first time.

He knocked on her door, and there was a long wait before she unlocked it.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey, did I wake you up?" he asked softly.

"No, I was up." Her voice was sad and small.

"I'm sorry I was so mad earlier. I just – I worry that we'll never be able to share the same space without murdering each other, and there are things about you I wish you could change – "

She cut him off. "Maybe we don't need to live together. We can be like Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter and get adjoining apartments. It would be very modern of us."

He exhaled loudly, pursing his lips. _Do the work._ "I don't want that."

"I don't either," she admitted. Then she did a double take and there was a glint of something sharp in her eyes. "Danny are you breaking up with me?"

"What? No! I was asking you to move in. Badly, apparently."

She laughed, then, her real, deep laugh that he only heard when he surprised her. She reached for him, kissing him with minty lips and hitting him with the palms of her hands at the same time. He crushed her to him, briefly.

"You are such an idiot."

"Yeah, well you knew what you were getting yourself into. Is that a yes?"

"We're going to be really short on closet space," she said. Her hands were still jammed into his side, clutching his shirt. "Maybe you should move in here."

"Absolutely not."

"That's so sexist, why wouldn't we live here?"

"Because I own my apartment and you don't?"

She nodded at this. "I guess that is sort of a good point. It's fine; I can keep my shoes in the guest bathroom. We can build a shoe rack."

"You're not keeping your shoes in the bathroom!"

"Danny, you know I'm going to win this battle. Or is this like Big, and you're secretly going to build me a walk-in closet as a romantic gesture?"

"What? That creepy Tom Hanks movie about the woman who hooks up with a kid?"

"Okay, first of all, who describes Big that way? Second of all, I'm talking about Sex and the City –" she broke off, looking excited. "Or is this more like Aidan, and we're going to kick out your new tenants and knock down the wall of your other apartment?"

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about…but that's actually not a bad idea. "

She smiled at him, one of her big rare smiles that reached all the way to her eyes. "I think so too."

* * *

She took over the bedroom immediately, filling it with her bright, clashing prints and nonsensical figurines. The dining room and the kitchen were his domain, and she didn't touch a thing. The living room she accepted as neutral territory, and only decorated sparingly. He drew the line at the candle that smelled like a tootsie roll but grudgingly accepted the one that reminded him of christmas.

When she was done, the apartment looked like it had been put together by an interior decorator with multiple personality disorder during a bender. He decided he didn't care.

She came around on some of his lamer habits, or at least she pretended she did. He almost got her to stop calling him her Italian stallion in front of people. And there were things he unexpectedly enjoyed, like her penchant for inventing wild dramatic backstories for all their neighbors. She was convinced that George on floor three was a secret agent with a violent double life. And she swore that Mrs. Newton on the first floor was having a tryst with a man twenty years younger. He even occasionally let himself play along, particularly after he took two 3AM elevator rides standing next to a stone-faced George, holding a briefcase with a very serious combination lock.

"Danny, Danny, Danny," she would say in her familiar breathless way, "imagine if we lived in one of those modern high rises where you can look into a million windows. We wouldn't even need our TV."

There were still days when his first thought when he opened his eyes in the morning was of running out the door. And he knew there were nights when she went to bed with murder in her eyes.

But even on those days, she still made him feel like he could be cured, or like he was a cure. Maybe both.


End file.
